One man in Tohoku left the following suicide note after realizing his land was ruined, ““If there were no nuclear power plants, if there were no nuclear power, this would not have happened.”
January 16, 2012 | Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky
Ten months after the March 11th Fukushima nuclear power plant triple meltdown, the Global Conference for A Nuclear Power Free World (脱原発世界会議2012 )was held on January 14 and 15th 2012 in Yokohama, Japan.
According to the organizers of the conference, over 100 people from 20 countries and more than 200 Japanese NGO participated to the Global Conference for Nuclear Power Free World in Yokohama between January 14 and 15th 2011, ten months after the big Fukushima power plant accident. As of Saturday 14th, there had been 16’600 live online viewers and over 6’427 tickets had been sold.
On Saturday, over 3000 people visited the conference in Yokohama, according to organizers. The final tally will be on Monday. The conference conveyed people from different countries in the world who have experienced nuclear disasters, such as hibakusha (people who have been exposed to large amounts of nuclear radiation) or nuclear waste land residents and people who were irradiated during nuclear weapons tests.
Their message was the same: “Call on your governments to shut down the nuclear power plants and uranium mines in the world.”
Ten months after the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, many people still have a feeling that the truth has not been told and that not enough has been done. “Only a global network of experts can be sufficient to support the victims of the Fukushima accident. The world has experienced Chernobyl and now Fukushima, we have to network, share information and learn from previous mistakes”, said the chairman of the Nuclear Free World Organizing Committee, Tatsuya Yoshioka. Many people from Tohoku committed suicide after they realized their land was forever tainted. One man in the last message on he posted on his desk before he died, wrote: “If there were no nuclear power plants, if there were no nuclear power, this would not have happened”.
Peter Watts, an aborigine and co-chair of The Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, said that the British government detonated a nuclear weapon on his neighboring lands in Australia in the 1950’s. Australia has four uranium mines, which is one third of the world’s total. Australia sells uranium to 15 countries, to the US, UK, France, Japan, South Korea, China, Spain, Taiwan, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Canada and South Africa. “TEPCO has bought Australian uranium, and the particles that were spread over Japan come from Australia. We must stop uranium mining”.
Shuntaro Hida, a Japanese medical doctor and Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor has been practicing his profession until March 2011. At the age of 94, he decided to retire after 3/11 and devote his time to giving advice the Fukushima mothers and victims. Having been a medical doctor during the US occupation, he knows that the US government did not disclose information about the effects of radioactivity and therefore some information is not well known in Japan.
Read more:
http://www.japansubculture.com/2012/01/shut-down-the-nukes-close-the-mines-nuclear-free-japan/
